Thing Not To Do Today: pontificate.

Who pontificates?

Well, the pontiff, of course.

Well, you can't blame him for doing it, can you: I mean, it's in the job-title.

As more or less everyone knows, the word pontiff (to whom we more usually refer as the pope) comes from the Latin pontifex, which means bridge builder, because the pontiff makes a bridge between the people of the world and God.

However, as with many things more or less everyone knows, this is almost certainly completely wrong.

Ah well!

For those of us who are not popes, which is practically all of us, (though popes aren't as rare as they used to be) then pontificating is to be avoided.

For one thing, it'll make everyone hate you; and, for another, nearly everything you know is quite probably wrong.

So best keep quiet, eh?

Thing Not To Do Today: pontificate. The Pontifex Maximus was the chief priest in Ancient Rome, who often had a political, as well as a religious role in the state. The word pontifex might be Etruscan, but because the Latin pons means bridge and facere means to make, then deciding that this is the derivation of the word  pontifex was just to tempting a story for most of us to resist.